“My Company Is Friendly,” “Mine’s a Rebel”: Anthropomorphism and Shifting Organizational Identity From “What” to “Who”

Why don’t we blink when our organizations are described as friendly or aggressive? Why do we expect our organizations to care about our well-being? We argue that anthropomorphism—an attribution of human qualities or behavior to nonhuman entities, objects, and events—is both pervasive and surprisingly important in organizational life. Anthropomorphism helps satisfy the motives for sensemaking and social connection, even if the veracity of the...